


brand new god

by succubused



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, um. everyone is an avatar and i mean everyone
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-27
Updated: 2020-08-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:53:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26133775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/succubused/pseuds/succubused
Summary: Sasha gazed down at the lit cigarette for a moment before chuckling to herself and gently plucking it from his hand, careful not to touch the burning skin. “Thanks.”Tim blinked at her, bemused, as she blew a thin stream of smoke towards the street. “Usually that pulls more of a reaction.”“Yeah, well.”He made no move to take the cigarette she offered him, staring at the bright green eye that had opened in the palm of her hand.au where everyone is an avatar. things ultimately go differently due to this.
Relationships: Basira Hussain/Alice "Daisy" Tonner, Gerard Keay/Michael Shelley, Gerard Keay/Michael | The Distortion, Helen Richardson & Michael Shelley, Helen | The Distortion & Sasha James, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Sasha James & Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Sasha James & Michael | The Distortion, Sasha James/Tim Stoker, the & means it is a platonic one
Comments: 20
Kudos: 92





	brand new god

**Author's Note:**

> I had been thinking about this concept pretty much non stop since reaching season 3 of TMA...I have always associated certain characters pretty strongly with certain entities and this has been/will be a lot of fun. It's divergent enough from the canon timeline that it shouldn't be too dangerous spoiler-wise but I can update this as it comes :)

Ordinarily Sasha avoided house parties. It had nothing to do with a distaste for crowds and everything to do with the how many people she ended up getting introduced to at such events; introductions, she found, were particularly difficult to navigate without asking questions. Particularly so when she was a few beers in.

She could have made her excuses when he finally got brave enough to approach. She was good at excuses, by now. But the two of them had been trading looks from across the room all night, and he was cute, and no one else had been interesting enough to distract her.

Sasha did have a system, of course. She always had a system. 

“Got a name?” the man said. 

“Sure.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“Yours first,” Sasha told him, and he snorted.

“Tim.”

“Tim,” she repeated, drawing out the single syllable as if telling a joke. “Hi, Tim. I’m Sasha.”

“How d’you know Margaret?”

“Work friend.” Sasha winced as a couple pushed past, thinking extremely loudly about what they intended to do once they were alone. Tricky...sometimes they didn’t wait for you to ask. “You know her too, I assume. Unless you’re some stranger who wandered in off the street.”

He considered her with a bored smile. “And if I am?”

She shrugged. “Might reconsider asking if you wanted to go outside for a cigarette.”

“I could tell you a lie.”

“Then you had better make it an interesting one.”

“Mm.” Tim scratched the side of his face absently. “We...share a hobby.”

“A hobby.”

“Yeah.” He grinned. “Recreational arson.”

Sasha laughed. “You’re lying.”

“Hand to God.”

“Well, Jesus, I hope not.” 

“Why’s that?”

“Because we don’t allow ignition sources in the—around the research materials.”

Tim rolled his eyes. “I said recreational. Generally implies  _ outside  _ of work hours.”

Maybe he was lying. Maybe he wasn’t. He didn’t necessarily look like the sort of person who  _ wouldn’t  _ commit arson, and Sasha didn’t look closely enough to check. Besides, the crowded living room had grown uncomfortably hot.

“Fine,” she said. “It’s too sweaty in here besides.”

As they shoved through the crowd towards the porch and its promise of fresh air, Sasha couldn’t help but notice that Tim took great care not to let his skin brush against the drunken partygoers. She wondered whether he might be some sort of germaphobe. 

The answer was there, but she wouldn’t look. If she didn’t see, then she wouldn’t know. She would find out on her own terms. 

She smiled to herself. Jon thought her whole process was nonsense; it was mostly technicalities, true, but it made her feel better, so she stuck to it. 

A rush of cold air met them head-on, and Sasha realized too late that she forgot to bring her coat. The porch itself didn’t seem so cold, as though lit by some sort of heat lamp. She sat heavily on the top step, wincing when it creaked ominously underneath her.

“So.”

She glanced sideways at Tim, who met her eyes steadily with the same half-bored expression he had been wearing all night. His eyes seemed brighter under the streetlights’ pale yellow glow, flickering in the dark like the embers of a dying fire.

“You said you set things on fire for fun.”

“Hmm.” Tim tilted his head to the side, theatrically lost in thought. “I suppose you could put it that way, if you wanted.”

“Sounds like you have a different way of putting it.”

He smiled and shrugged. “Need a light?”

Wordlessly Sasha handed him her cigarette and watched as he tapped his index finger against the open end until it glowed a pale orange. Somehow, she couldn’t quite find it in herself to be surprised.

After all, she couldn’t avoid knowing that the porch had no heat lamp. 

She gazed down at the lit cigarette for a moment before chuckling to herself and gently plucking it from his hand, careful not to touch the burning skin. “Thanks.”

Tim blinked at her, bemused, as she blew a thin stream of smoke towards the street. “Usually that pulls more of a reaction.”

“Yeah, well.”

He made no move to take the cigarette she offered him, staring at the bright green eye that had opened in the palm of her hand. 

Sasha wrinkled her nose. Always made her dizzy, seeing things from two places at once, and the view from her second set was rarely flattering. They stared at each other for a while, unsure of what to do. If she felt any fear at all, Sasha’s curiosity far outweighed it.

Eventually, Tim groaned and leaned back on his elbows. “Damn.”

There were scorch marks on his cuffs and the collar of his shirt. Impossible not to know, now that she found herself looking.

“We gotta go at it now, I guess?”

Sasha laughed. “You didn’t seem  _ that  _ bored.”

“No, I mean—”

“I know what you mean. Not like that,” she added quickly, when his blazing eyes went cold. “What I mean is more like…”

She hesitated.

“We  _ could _ ,” she said. “Or—no, listen, listen—what we could also do is finish this cigarette and, you know, peacefully go our separate ways. I think that’s an option too.”

Tim glanced down at her hands again. Helpfully, Sasha opened both palms’ eyes. He shuddered, shot her a look that had her half expecting he was about to try and melt her face off on the spot, and then—

“Sounds fine to me,” he said calmly. “On one condition.”

“Shoot.”

“You give me your number.”

“Mm…” Sasha rested her chin in her thoughtfully blinking hands. “Give me ten minutes to decide whether I like you or not, then.”

Tim grunted. “Can’t your sort just—I don’t know,  _ see  _ that kind of thing?”

“I prefer to hear it myself.” She grinned at him, triumphant. “Actually, I don’t believe I’ve asked you a single question.”

He opened his mouth briefly before snapping it shut with a mumbled curse.

“No,” he said. “No, I guess you haven’t.”

  
  


//

  
  
  
  


“You met a  _ boy _ ?” 

Sasha rolled her eyes. “Hello, Michael.”

“No, really, he was  _ cuuuuuute _ ,” Michael purred, twisting through the plywood door still only half-manifested on a nearby alleyway wall. With apparent difficulty, he folded one of his hands into something that wouldn’t injure her when he slapped her on the back.

That he  _ thought _ wouldn’t injure her. Sasha ducked out of the way, knowing from experience that it was better to be safe than sorry.

“Fiery, wasn’t he?” Michael flashed her a smirk far wider than his face, clearly proud of his joke. “Although, I never heard of it going too well, for those candlewax types—at least, not for the people they try to—”

He disappeared with a yelp, and the door slammed shut once more as a tall woman with smooth brown skin and the kind, razor-sharp smile of a realtor ducked through.

“Sorry,” said Helen. “You know how boys can be.”

Helen and Michael. Michael and Helen. A face with two names, or a name with two faces, or something that wasn’t quite either but played at being both. Sasha tried her best to avoid knowing anything about them. She always ended up with a migraine.

“It’s not like he’s making it up,” she grumbled.

“Which part did you mean?”

Sasha glanced up just in time to see Helen dropping her eyes to the sidewalk, too late to hide the mischievous gleam. Really, Helen wasn’t much better than Michael. She just put on more airs.

Sasha kept her voice light. “The part about him being cute.” She scowled when a faint smile flickered across Helen’s face. “Besides, I thought I told you not to follow me.”

“We were worried,” Helen protested. “I mean, the way that street was  _ breathing _ ...it felt like getting coughed on by a broiler. A broiler with a fever, at that.”

Sasha narrowed her eyes. “You knew the Desolation would be there?”

Helen shrugged.

“And instead of, you know... _ telling  _ me, you—you just spied on me instead?”

“Technically we were Michael when we spied on you,” Helen pointed out.

Sasha sighed.

She’d been pulled through the door on a whim, according to them. They were in the area, they saw her running from that skin-stealing Stranger thing, and they, being Michael at the time, had thought—why not? Even if it wasn’t them she was scared of, it was still fear. Might taste interesting. Also, Michael later told her, he was horribly bored. 

It was only after she had closed the door behind her that they realized that Sasha James was a little more than touched by the Eye, and that she would not go down well, so to speak.

_ An Archivist?  _ Helen wailed at the cringing Michael.  _ You ate an ARCHIVIST? _

Why they became so attached to her after the fact, Sasha couldn’t say. She could have looked, of course, but every time she tried her head spun so fast she felt like vomiting. They swallowed her, they spat her back up, and now they were here. 

If they really were this bored, the Spiral must not be giving them much to do at all.

“Will you tell Jon?”

Sasha snorted.

“Fuck no,” she said. “And if he knows, he’ll keep his mouth shut if he’s got any idea what’s good for him.”

//

Sasha was too hasty, of course. Michael  _ was  _ busy—chasing, or hunting, or looking, depending on the angle, but either way there was someone who never looked long at the doors and always crossed the street too quickly, despite his heavy black combat boots and heavier footsteps. The long leather coat made Michael giggle sometimes—wasn’t it summer? Was it spring? The last time he bothered to check it had been halfway through May. 

Time, of course, had always been a silly little thing. Something to twist around his fingers and watch when he was bored. Michael found he was bored more often these days—at least, he thought he was. Maybe he had always been like this. Maybe no time had passed at all.

“Why do you  _ care  _ about that one so much?” Helen complained. Michael tried not to focus on the scratch of file against fingernail. The Distortion’s other face didn’t understand.

“He doesn’t care about the door.”

“So?” Helen dragged her index finger along the hallway floor, leaving behind a long, thin gouge. She nodded, satisfied. “Find someone marked. You’ve never gone for the tricky ones before.”

“Well, we all have different ways of staying sharp,” Michael murmured.

She rolled her eyes. “You’re making this so  _ complicated _ , dear.”

“You’re the real estate agent, not me.” He flashed her a smile that split his face in two. “Maybe I just have trash instincts.”

Helen put the nail file in her mouth and bit down. “I could teach you.”

“What, real estate?”

“Sure. You’re a cute young guy. You could draw in the demographics that  _ I _ ,” she gestured to her still-bloodstained pantsuit, “can’t quite appeal to.”

Michael snickered, wondering absently whether those trapped in the infinite corridors would hear his laughter as it spiraled through closed doors and empty halls. 

It was, after all, not too large. Just forever, which was different.

“Think about it,” Helen said, still chewing on a piece of emery board. “Family business, yeah?”

He shrugged and glanced at the half-eaten nail file. “You gonna finish that?”

At first, Michael thought the man in the leather coat couldn’t see his doors at all. The idea had been as fascinating as it was short-lived, crumpling as soon as he noticed the man’s eyes briefly hovering on the doorknob before sliding past—but he never looked for long enough to suggest he felt any part of it was out of place. It seemed he could see them fine. The doors just didn’t strike him as odd. 

It wasn’t every day Michael got to see something new.

The doors became less compatible with their surroundings. Heavy church doors in a half-demolished apartment complex, an industrial-strength safe door left unlocked and open in the hallway of the man’s own apartment, the wall of sliding glass in the center of a crosswalk that seemed to drop off into empty sky; he gave none of them more attention than he might give a street sign in passing. 

No different for the impossible doors with too many lines or too many corners, the doors that weren’t there and the doors that were so much there they seemed to leave no room for anything else. Sometimes he actually looked at the traffic lights for longer. Once he stared straight past a door made of fingers in order to squint at and apparently read the billboard into which it had been set.

Michael didn’t know why he couldn’t just abandon the man in the leather coat, with his black boots and his heavy feet. He didn’t want to. He didn’t know why he didn’t want to. He tried to find others, tried to suck down their fear the way he had always done, but he always found himself back there on that gray little street corner in Stratford, watching the front entrance of a worn-down apartment building, waiting for someone who wasn’t afraid of him at all. Sometimes they came face-to-face with one another, and he would smile at Michael without looking at him, and it would be all Michael could do not to rip him to pieces in broad daylight.

Not that it would have mattered, really. It just would have felt like cheating.

Helen began sucking down unwitting real estate customers at an alarming rate. Helen noticed that there was something wrong with her other face, because Helen noticed everything, but it wasn’t until Michael confronted her a few weeks after she began eating for two that she acknowledged it. Even then, she had little to say, sauntering back through the ratty white door that had so offended her most recent target with a shrug. 

He had been a rich man. At least, he looked rich when he stumbled through. Michael hadn’t been paying attention. Michael forgot to exist when they weren’t him, sometimes.

Helen seemed to like eating rich men.

She smiled brightly when he asked what she was after. “Oh, I’m just interested,” she said. “I’m quite enjoying watching this business unfold. You had better make it a good ending, dear.”

Michael didn’t know what to say. The man in the leather coat made him very angry. Every time he glanced past the doors as if they were no more conspicuous than an oddly placed tree, Michael got angrier, and angrier. 

He did not recognize the anger, but it belonged to him all the same.

The next day, Michael followed the man into the first floor of a Georgian townhouse that had been converted into a tiny antiquarian bookstore. The interior was cramped, crammed with yellowing manuscripts and books in various states of deterioration. It smelled thickly of dust and old leather, still in the sacrosanct silence unique to bookstores and libraries.

Michael wasn’t sure when he started screaming. He wasn’t sure he had even started screaming at all. He hardly recognized the high shriek as his own voice. Maybe it was and maybe it wasn’t. Either way he was using it to wail at the man in the leather coat as he stood before the bookshelf nearest to the door, thumbing through a decaying hardback with a slightly pinched look of vague disinterest. His face twitched in annoyance every time Michael raised his voice, saying  _ why don’t you look at me _ ,  _ why don’t you say anything, WHY WON’T YOU OPEN THE DOOR— _

At last, the man sighed, and snapped the book roughly shut.

“Because I’ve seen what happens to people who go through it.”

He turned around.

“Hello, M̷͓͓̳͇̫̑i̷̧̪̳̺̪̪͑̆̉̉͒͒c̶̦͉̿̓̈̕͝h̶̨͒͒͛͂̕͝a̴͇̲̺͉̖̓e̷̦̼̣̋l̵̞̗̩͐̀̿̆̍.”

And Michael—

Mić̴̢͕͘͠h̴̦̥̹̅̾̚a̷̟̫̠̿é̵̗̿́͐l—

_ Micha̴͈͋̄e̵̯̣̅l? _

It rolled off the man’s tongue wrong. Came out garbled and— _ distorted _ , even—the thought made Michael giggle. He was saying it wrong. He didn’t mean Michael when he said Michael’s name. He meant someone else. 

He meant M̶̼̩̤̈́̄i̷̧̧͓͚͚͕͗͂̈́̃c̷͕͚̓̀͒͗͘͠h̷̪͉̼̊a̶̡̗͉̿͒ȩ̴͍̄̇͆l̶͇̹̈̈́ 

and he meant someone who wasn’t Michael 

but Michael was Michael 

Michael was the only one who had ever been

Michael tilted his head, smiling slightly. 

“It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”

Gerard Keay nodded.

“You look different,” he said, his voice hoarse and thin. 

“So do you.”

It was true. Something about him was heavier than it had been before, leaving the strange impression that he was on the verge of sinking through the carpet and down into the earth. 

“I won’t be crossing that threshold,” Gerry told him evenly. “You’re better off not wasting your energy. Already got a home.”

He smelled faintly of dirt, Michael realized, and his smile widened.

“Well, well,” he crooned. “I wouldn’t have expected  _ you _ .”

Gerry only shrugged and tucked a strand of dark, unwashed hair behind his ear. “You planning on killing me, then?”

Michael considered him for a few seconds, scratching absently at a book he hadn’t realized he was holding. He glanced down at it and could just make out the word  _ Смачкана, _ carved neatly into the leather cover. “Not right now, no.”

“Then there’s nothing for us to say to each other.”

They shook hands, impossible branching fingers wrapped around what felt like grasping a handful of soil, despite the apparently clean skin.

“Well, don’t be a stranger,” Michael said lightly. “It’s always lovely to see old friends.”

Gerry gave him a strange look before glancing down at the book still clutched in Michael’s free hand. His pale eyes lit up.

“Let me see that.”

Silently Michael handed it over and watched as Gerry turned it over and over in his hands, muttering quietly to himself. Finally, he nodded and dropped the book onto the floor, watched it sink slowly through until it disappeared entirely with the sound of crumpling paper.

“Some of them don’t burn as well as the others,” he murmured.

When Gerry turned on his heel and left the room, Michael didn’t bother trying to put a door in his way. He could only watch the retreating figure, head flooding with memories that were undoubtedly his own, but did not belong to him at all.

_ Michael, _ he thought.  _ Michael Michael Michael. _

It was his name, but he lied every time he said so.

He missed having a name.

He opened a door. He walked through the door.

“Not quite the finale I was expecting,” quipped the other face.

He shrugged and started down the hallway. Helen watched him disappear around the corner.

“Right, then.”

She rolled up her sleeves and stepped through a new door into the muted sunlight of an East London morning, greeting her newest clients with a sharklike grin. The sign to her left read “OPEN HOUSE.”

“Hello,” Helen said pleasantly. “Are you ready to begin the tour?”

//

Winter meant six in the morning still belonged to the night, and the pale suggestion of sunlight had only just begun to creep over the horizon when Jon arrived at the institute. Sasha glanced up as he passed her office, pausing her paper-shuffling to wink at him. The two archivists had reached a silent understanding over the past few months; both found it far easier to work when there were less people around for them to see.

Jon stared listlessly at the pile of unread statements lying haphazardly on his desk. He had plucked them at random from a series of old files the night before—although, he knew, there was likely nothing random about them at all. 

_ Just go  _ look _ for them _ , Elias had said, smirking up at Jon as if he had made a particularly clever joke. He took an irritable sip of coffee, wincing when it burned his tongue. It would be annoying if Elias’s advice ended up working. Even more annoying that he couldn’t think of a different approach.

It would undoubtedly go faster if he recruited Sasha. After all, seven eyes were better than three.

Only…

“Sasha?”

He couldn’t see Sasha.

“Sasha—!”

The hallway was empty. Mechanically Jon checked her office, knowing what he would find before he opened the door: a half-drunk mug of green tea resting on an abandoned desk. 

He shook his head slowly and returned to his own office to wait. The knock came four minutes later.

“Yes, come in.”

The door swung open, revealing a heavyset young man wearing glasses and an oversized turtleneck sweater. 

“Sorry,” said the man. “Needed a minute alone with you.”

Jon sighed. “You could have  _ asked _ , Martin.”

“Didn’t want to.”

“Right.” He paused. “What on Earth does Lukas want now?”

Martin scowled, freckled nose wrinkling. “I hate it when you do that.”

“I know,” Jon said dryly.

Thin wisps of fog swept through the doorway, curling around Martin’s ankles like an affectionate cat. 

“I’ve brought you take-out,” Martin told him, and tossed a small notebook onto the desk. Jon raised an eyebrow as the bright green eye in the center of his throat cracked open hopefully.

“Ordinarily I’d ask you to taste it first to check for poison, but I suppose that isn’t an option here.”

“The  _ polite  _ thing would be to say, ‘Thank you, Martin, that was very thoughtful.’”

Jon snorted. “I think I’ll wait until I’ve read it first.”

“Suit yourself.”

Martin shut the door and the mist disappeared, leaving Jon to pick up the notebook and flip through it. It seemed to be completely empty apart from the first five pages, which were filled from top to bottom with neat, thin script. The notebook itself felt almost damp, as if it had been left sitting in dewy grass overnight. 

Jon’s throat blinked. That was exactly what had happened.

“Long cigarette break, huh?”

“You know it wasn’t,” he muttered.

Sasha leaned against the doorframe. “I was  _ being  _ polite.”

“Thirty minutes this time.”

“Thirty-two.” She squinted at the notebook. “You don’t know what that’s about.”

Jon scratched at an old scar on the back of his hand. “No idea.”

Sasha shrugged and wordlessly leaned over to gather up the statements still spread across the desk. “How’s our solitary friend doing?”

“As visibly uncomfortable with human interaction as ever.”

“Jon, you do remember—”

“The last time I took a statement Martin offered me, yes.” 

A frown tugged at the corners of Sasha’s mouth as she pulled her mass of curly hair into a ponytail. “I’m not covering for you if you go catatonic again.”

“It was only a week,” he protested.

“ _ Only _ a week.”

“You were out for a month after your little run-in with that Stranger thing—”

Sasha rolled her eyes. “Raise it with Michael. Or Helen. Or whoever they are this week. Or don’t,” she added, seeing his expression. “Anyway, I’ll take care of these for you. Remember not to play with your food too much.”

She left with an armful of unread statements, and Jon was alone once more. He looked from the open notebook to the old tape recorder and back again. Vaguely satisfied with the excuse to do anything but what Elias had asked of him, he dropped his eyes to the first page and began to read.

“Statement of Donovan Marcus, regarding a disrupted church service and the consequences thereof. Statement taken from a...secondary source, January thirteenth, 2017.”

Jon cleared his throat softly. 

“Statement begins.”

“There was—there was nothing  _ wrong  _ with her, you see? I still don’t—I mean, I’m not even sure it was...anything. I could have been...I, I was hung over, sure, it’d been a long night—Saturday, you know. But it—it—I knew her. Lauren, I mean. Like, not close, not like some of the congregation did, I think she was, um, closer friends with a couple of the council members, but we’d talked. Before. She was—is, I guess? I really, I don’t...anyway, she was around my age, we made the same sort of jokes about showing up to church half-drunk, that sort of thing. So we were—most of us were pretty friendly with her.

“And she was in a really, really good mood that morning. Practically bounced through the front doors, grinning all over, kept saying hi in this—this weird tone of voice, I—I don’t know how to describe it. Kind of hoarse, maybe, like she’d been yelling. She kept wincing, too, like, first it was once every ten minutes, then it was once every five, and it kept getting—closer and closer together, until it was practically every time she breathed, and every time it happened her smile just got bigger and bigger—I mean, it was freaky, I guess. But it’s not a crime to be happy, right? No. She didn’t do anything wrong.

“That’s the thing, you know? She didn’t  _ do  _ anything. She was just sitting there, third pew from the front, with a couple of her council friends. Like always. And I don’t even—I don’t even know why I was watching her so much. She wasn’t doing anything weird. No, the people around her started the weird shit.

“I don’t remember who the first one was. It might’ve been someone behind me, even, so I might’ve never seen them at all. I just know that—that I looked around, and throughout the room there were—people, at random, standing very still. People I knew, of course. And at first I thought they might have been—singing? Their mouths were wide open, but there was no sound coming out, and—and it wasn’t until the pastor’s mouth dropped open that I smelled it. The...God, it was...I don’t really want to describe it, I’m sorry. If you’ve ever smelled burning flesh, then you know, and I really am sorry. If you haven’t, well, congratulations.

“It looked like ash. It  _ was  _ ash. It was filling up their—their throats, and their mouths, and then it started spilling out of their eyes, and their noses, I—they weren’t making a sound, but I could see it in their eyes. How much it hurt. Having your whole body destroyed so slowly, from the inside, slow enough that—that at any point, if you caught it early enough, maybe it would have been alright, but—but you couldn’t. I could imagine it. The pastor hadn’t even stopped speaking. His mouth wasn’t moving, but I could still hear him speaking. And I knew it was coming towards me. 

“Lauren was still sitting in her pew. She hadn’t moved, or anything. She just sort of looked at me, and she smiled at me, and—and I  _ know  _ how insane this sounds, I really do, but—I just, I just  _ knew  _ she was enjoying it. She kept flicking her eyes across the room, like she didn’t want to miss a second of it. I remember thinking—I mean, I didn’t really know what was—I was kind of in shock, right? But I remember thinking she had to be some kind of demon, or something. ‘Cause, you know, it was in a church and all. Maybe.

“People were starting to drop. The ones who did, their faces were, you know, practically, um, unrecognizable. Burned. And Lauren just kept smiling. And I knew, it was getting so hot, I just, I just  _ knew  _ it would be my turn soon, and...and then the lights went out.

“Sounds kind of stupid, I know. Lights out. But, that, that’s what happened. One second there were melting faces all around me, faces I knew, and then just—nothing. Just dark. I couldn’t even smell it anymore, I couldn’t—it wasn’t empty, it was just...gone. And the weird thing was, I—as soon as I couldn’t see them anymore, it didn’t feel hot. And I didn’t feel scared. It stopped coming towards me, I don’t know how to explain how I knew, but it—it just stopped. Like I couldn’t see it, so it wasn’t there. 

“I don’t know why I didn’t run. I think I felt like there was nowhere to run to. Like I’d just keep going and going and going into that black and never actually move at all. And when I woke up in the hospital, they told me that we’d been in that church for thirty-six hours before the police got a tip about it. How many of those were waiting for the ash to come, how many of them were standing in the dark, I’ve got no way of knowing. Not really sure I want to.

“The strangest thing—the strangest thing about it was that none of the others, none of them were burned at all. Their faces and throats, everything I’d seen practically melting off the bones, it was all back where it started. Like nothing had happened. The nurse told me we’d all been unconscious or catatonic when the EMTs arrived, and—and there were a couple of people who’d been in critical condition, but it seemed that they had suffered heart attacks of some sort. No external injuries at all. Matched up perfectly with the people I’d seen collapsing during the service. No one had seen Lauren.

“I decided not to think about it. I’m making an exception for you, but I don’t want to think about it anymore. I feel like if I think about it too much I’ll see it again, and if I see it again...I don’t know if the dark will save me a second time. So, uh...that’s it, I guess.”

Jon stared at the tape recorder for a moment before slowly clicking it off. He closed his eyes and counted down.

_ Five...four...three...two… _

“Sounds like the Desolation.”

“Almost certainly,” he said. 

Sasha nodded. “Why would Lukas…?”

“I…”

He frowned.

“I can’t see.”

“Yeah, that mist shit always gets in the way with him. Obnoxious, right?”

“Sasha.”

“Mm?”

Jon raised his eyebrows. She groaned.

“Because it wasn’t  _ relevant  _ before now,” she told him irritably. “What, I can’t meet guys at parties when I’m off work?”

“You met an avatar of the Desolation.”

“Yeah, and he was a really cute guy.”

“Who could have melted your face off.”

“My God, Jon, I’m not an idiot. I wasn’t about to  _ touch  _ him.”

Footsteps echoed at the other end of the hall; it was past 8 a.m., and less watchful employees were trickling in. Jon watched Sasha fidget with the torn cuff of her cardigan with a feeling of growing helplessness.

“It’s a bad idea,” he said.

“I know.”

“You shouldn’t do it.”

“I know.”

“You’re going to do it, aren’t you?”

Sasha grinned.

//

“I just feel like, you know, we’re not really on  _ even  _ footing here.”

“We’re not.”

Tim chuckled. “At least you’re the honest type.”

“I can’t set you on fire,” Sasha pointed out, adding to her pile of methodically shredded sugar packets. A layer of coffee-colored sludge had formed at the bottom of her empty cup. “You can set me on fire.”

“We’re in public.”

“And you expect me to believe that would stop you.”

He tapped the table thoughtfully. “True.”

“Besides,” she added, “you did agree to meet me here.”

“Maybe I’m just a sucker for pretty girls who can see from their hands.”

“Sounds awful.”

Tim dragged his thumb along the table’s edge, leaving behind a finger-width scorch mark. He glanced through the café window, eyeing the light drizzle of rain beginning to fall outside. “You’ve got one.”

“Huh.” Sasha raised an eyebrow. “You that desperate for something new?”

“Never answered an archivist before. Heard it tickles.”

“So they say.”

“One question,” Tim said sharply. “Only one.”

“Very generous of you.” 

The door opened with a soft tinkle and a gust of air sent the scraps of sugar packet flying, drifting to the floor like paper snow. Sasha watched them fall for a moment before turning back to her companion.

“How did Lauren Harvey die?”

“Dark snuffed her out.” Tim stiffened, eyes wide. “Whoa. That does feel weird.”

“Dark?” Sasha frowned. She kept her hands folded tightly, but not quite tight enough to hide the flash of blue. “It was an avatar?”

“Yep. It—” He scowled. “Wait. I said one.”

“You did. Sorry. I, uh—I forgot.”

“Sure you did,” Tim mumbled.

“Tim.”

“What?”

“Tim, I need you to tell me what happened to Lauren.”

The air seemed to flicker around her, buzzing with something like radio static, and Tim realized too late that her hands were open.

“The church,” he said automatically. “She was at it for a few days in there but this, uh—I don’t know what her name is. Like I said, one of those Dark avatars. She pulled the plug on the whole thing. Doused it. Lights out. Lauren was in the middle of—well, let’s just say she was still eating, right. It happened so fast she was still in the middle of eating her nice despair-seasoned meal and she didn’t realize she was chomping on the dark until it was too late. Choked on it, so to speak. Or an allergic reaction. However you want to think about it. Doesn’t really matter. She’s…”

A small flame burst to life in the center of his palm. Tim stared briefly before snapping his hand shut, extinguishing it entirely. Sasha nodded.

“Tell me what you know about this avatar.”

“Never saw her. Don’t know her name. We’re not the only ones she’s been fucking with, though. Hunt and Slaughter also had a couple run-ins.”

“Tell m—”

“No.”

Sasha blinked. Her hands curled closed.

“No,” Tim repeated, breathing heavily. “No.”

His expression was murderous. For the first time since she had met him, Sasha felt a spark of fear catch in the pit of her stomach.

“I didn’t—”

“You pull one more word out of me and this whole place is going up,” he snarled. “Got it?”

For a moment it seemed he intended to do it anyway. A pair of businessmen at the neighboring table were tugging on their collars, under the impression that the café heating system had abruptly malfunctioned. Sasha stayed in her chair, frozen, as the air began to crackle. She could smell burning hair. 

It was Tim, she realized. The hairs on his forearm were smoking.

Sasha flinched when the front door slammed shut. Dazed, she watched Tim stalk down the sidewalk, rubbing at his eyes as if trying to get rid of sunspots. The rain turned to steam when it touched his skin. There were scorch marks on the table where he had gripped it. 

Technically, she hadn’t been asking questions, at the end. He left her a loophole. Sasha was very good at finding loopholes.

Somehow that didn’t make her feel any better.

//

Snowfall could be as much a gift as a curse, depending on whether or not the hunters knew what they were doing. Most of the advantages doubled as disadvantages; snow didn’t play favorites. Cold didn’t bother her, the increased visibility worked both ways, and tailing grew far easier once there were tracks to follow...and there was also the unavoidable nature of leaving her own trail.

At least, it would have been unavoidable, if she were stupid enough to travel by ground.

Daisy shifted against the tree. She found herself irritated with her target for choosing to take refuge in a pine forest. It was almost impossible to catch a scent clearly; from where she waited in the top branches, the smell was almost suffocating. Luckily she knew what she was doing.

It had started to seem likely that the avatar she was tracking knew what she was doing, too, but Daisy didn’t want to get her hopes up. A few had been promising in the past. And that made Daisy get excited, and Daisy got faster when she got excited, and then they went down quick and hard, and it was over. She didn’t want it to be over.

Daisy dropped to the forest floor, landed in the snow with a soft  _ thump _ , listened to the crack of her twisting bones as they molded her into something more suitable for the hunt. She sniffed at the air curiously. The blood didn’t smell human, but it wasn’t hers, either. A deer. The target had been hunting. 

She leaned out to get a better look, keeping her balance with what was by now more claw than hand, caught sight of the plaid shirt and gray hijab and the deer slung over her shoulder, and grinned.

If there had been anyone around to see, they would have noticed that she smiled with far too many rows of teeth.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please go ahead and leave a comment if you feel like it, I try to respond to everyone if I can :) & as always I deeply appreciate the support


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